Mirror Images
by Kirra kills
Summary: sometimes, things, places, and people are more similar than at first thought


Their worlds, like them, were so very different, yet so very alike. Separated by a mirror, magical or not, they honestly can't say. Looking at them, you would say they're really not alike at all. Sure, both are strange, sunny people, always smiling, joking. Both are brilliant.

_Never forget, both are killers_.

Beyond that, there really isn't anything that connects them, not really. But there is so much more than that! Like a mirror, there is more than meets the eye. Like a mirror, they reflect each other in perfect clarity. To be sure, there are differences.

_But then again, there always are_.

No-one knew why he insisted on keeping a mirror in his room, it wasn't like the albino bothered about his appearance, not really. But the mirror was there, and there it stayed, despite what anyone said. After all, Xerxes Break was a strange person indeed.

His friends weren't quite certain the reason for his obsession with taking the room with the mirror, or finding an apartment with a mirror at all, when they went to the different worlds. Not even Mokona knew the exact reason why. They just thought it was part of his eccentricity. After all, it wasn't like he paid particular heed to his personal appearance. Yes, their Fai D. Fluorite was an eccentric person indeed.

Sometimes, after a long day, he'd pop into his room. You couldn't say _walked_ in, because that was something the albino never did. The room would be empty, until he opened the door of a closet or slipped out from under the bed-a previously unoccupied space. Yes, _popped_ is really the only way to describe it. He'd gently put down Emily on the bed or dresser or night-stand or anywhere really, and he'd pad to where the mirror was, inconspicuous and innocent where it rested on the wall. He'd look into the mirror, and a strange smile would creep onto his face. Not 'crazy' or 'mad' as it was normally, but relieved, almost. Xerxes tilted his head to one side and gently rested his right hand on the glass. "Hello, you~" he said.

Whenever he had the chance, the blonde would lock himself in the room currently designated as "his", or the bathroom, or wherever there was a reflective surface, really. Recently, he had felt the need to remove the eye patch he, as of recently, needed to use. After all, for all they might both have one eye now, the patch would really ruin the symmetry. He'd step silently up to the mirror, the happy, clueless smile gone as if it never had been on his face in the first place. A different smile was there, now. It looked, almost, relieved. Fai tilted his head to one side and gently touched the glass with his left hand. "Hello, you~" he said.

_Sometimes, it feels like I'm trapped in a place where you're not there_.

They looked at each other through the glass. Whether portal or illusion, they didn't know. Whether real or imagined, they didn't care. The face they saw in the glass was the same they always saw, and yet it wasn't.

Xerxes Break saw a man with wild blond hair and pale-tan skin. The man looked at Break through hooded blue eyes, or eye, now. The remaining eye was as yellow as a lemon drop, now. Today his blonde hair fell into his face, over the empty socket, like his, almost. Could two people from different times, worlds,_ lives_, be so similar? To Xerxes, the blonde person in the reflection was proof that he didn't fail. He had saved _someone_ from the Sinclair family. The other, Fai, looked like the small boy, the older brother of his charge, but second-youngest of the family. As long as Fai was there, Xerxes could live, a little, with what he had done when he was Kevin Regnard. Apparently, the Will had given him what he wanted, after all.

Fai D. Fluorite saw a man with badly cut white hair and pale, pale-tan skin. His wild white hair always fell over an empty socket, while the remaining eye burned blood-red through a hooded lid. Looking at him now, he could almost believe they were the same. Almost. How could they be so _similar_, living in worlds, lives,_ times_, apart? To Fai, Xerxes was his lost half, his dead brother, the _real_ Fai, not him, not _Yuui_. He had held hope when he learned of the different worlds and different selves. Seeing the albino on the other side of the glass, he could almost believe that Fei Wong Reed had kept his promise, after all.

_Both _soso_ much older than previously thought_.

They look through the mirror at each other. Sometimes draped over it, sometimes just brushing it with their fingers, sometimes not in contact with it at all, but simply staring at what they saw. Whether their perceptions of one another were real or imagined is unclear, or if they even know of what the other sees in him. But the perceptions are there, as are the memories, broken and fast, tainting the smiles, the tears, the person himself behind the glass. They have seen the changes, when they see each other, and it is catalogued in their minds. They remembered when neither would smile, when both had a full pair of eyes, when both had log hair, when one had blue eyes instead of yellow, when both had been human. How much of each other's past they knew was unclear, but both knew that much. One was not always a vampire and one was not always a redeemed Chain. But whether either had been human, truly, both doubted. A human could not, would not, stoop to the lows they had, or do the things they had done.

They would stand, not talking, really, just watching. Sometimes it was only a few minutes; other times it lasted hours. But it always ended the same way. The door always opened on both sides, and someone always came through. For Fai it was always Kurogane, Sakura, or even Syoran, once. For Break it was Gilbert-san, or Alice, or Oz, once.

Today, it was Alice who came in.

Today, it was Sakura who entered.

"Clown!" shouted the long-haired girl. "What the hell are you doing? We're going to be late!" her eyes narrowed, her foot pounded the floor, her arms crossed angrily. "Ne, Miss Alice tap your foot any harder and we'll fall through the floor~!" he said to her light-heartedly.

"Fai-sama!" shouted the short-haired girl. "What are you doing? We need to go! Now!"

Her eyes shone in annoyance as her foot tapped a hard beat into the floor, her arms crossed, almost angrily, it seemed. "Nigh, Sakura-chan, glare at me any harder and my face will melt~!"

The girl in the red Victorian dress growled. She flicked her dark brown hair away from her face in annoyance, while grabbing Break's arm. "Oz says the pocket watch is picking up on one of my memories again! So come _on_!" she pulled ferociously at his arm, dragging him away from the mirror as he laughed and made a show of resisting.

The girl in the white Egyptian dress huffed angrily before shaking her light brown hair from her face and took Fai's arm. "Mokona-san says one of my memories is near!" She told the blonde wizard. "So we have to go! Hurry_ up_!" the girl yanked viciously at his arm, pulling him from the mirror as he laughed and came along fairly easily.

The hands attached to the mirror slowly came away.

Sakura turned to look at her friend again, and stopped. The hand she was holding wasn't the hand of Fai D. Fluorite, her friend and protector; the hand she held was of a strange albino man with a hooded red eye. The smile he gave her was the same as the one Fai always gave, but at the same time also very, very different. She felt like prey caught in the trap of a very dangerous, very _brilliant_, predator. He was the same, and he was different, and it frightened her. F-fai-sama…?

Alice turned to look at the annoying clown, and froze. The arm she had in a death grip wasn't his; it was a man with bright yellow hair and a single eye of the same color. The smile on his face was identical to Break's, but it was warped, somehow. He reminded her of the witch from _Hansel and Gretel_, she had seemed good and kind, but later tried to eat the children. That look was the same as Break's, and yet different, and it chilled her to the bone. "C-clown…?"

A moment later, the warped images were gone. Alice held the arm of the stupid Mad Hatter as Sakura held the arm of the slightly ditzy vampire. Suddenly, it wasn't the girls who were holding the hands; the men had somehow switched it around, holding the girls' hands, instead. Suddenly, the previously still males were bundles of raw energy, practically _carrying _the girls out of the different rooms.

"Well, what are we waiting for, Miss Rabbit?" the hatter told the girl happily. "You want to remember again, don't you~?" She growled, and then a slightly panicked "wait, put me down! Dumb clown! You can't lead me, you're _blind_!" The not-quite-there laughter as he careened out of the door, and out of the building, the girl's screams echoing back into Break's little room. And, maybe, through the mirror.

"Then let's go, Sakura-chan~" the vampire stated gleefully. "We really should return all of your memories to you, no?" she stared daggers at him, then more than a little worried, "wait! Let go, Fai-sama! You can't lead the way! You don't know where to go!" his brainless laughter as he ran through the door and beyond, mingled with her shouts, floating up into the little room. And, maybe, into the mirror-reflected room, as well.

_People say there are two sides to every story, just as there are two sides to every mirror. One side is yours-where you are, what you see. Your __**reality**__, really. The other side is anyone else's. but if that's true, which side is the true side-yours, or mine? _

What is illusion, what is real? Are we illusions? Or is the other side what is fantasy? Food for thought


End file.
